Best of Month: The top 25 songs of the year
Hi, it’s me, it’s Claudia, and today I’m going to do something I haven’t done yet. So every year I do the top ten singles of the year, but I don’t actually even listen to singles anymore. Unless I know they’re going to be singles, like on their own, otherwise I feel like they’re spoiling the record for me. This year I thought it’d be fun to broadcast my top twenty-five songs of the year because I do this every year for friends, mainly myself, but now it can be content. So, this won’t be a highly produced blog post and instead be very casual but hopefully you’ll get something out of it. If you’re coming from Reddit read the link below before leaving any comments for me on here or Reddit itself and let’s get started.
Also, quick note. Some of these did not come out this year but are on records released this year. In those cases, assume I haven't heard the track till this year.
Coming from Reddit? Start here!
#25 “Glow in the Dark” by Mothica is from Rocksmith+ but it's also just a really good Mothica song. That little “Don’t. Be. Scared.” is really catchy and has stuck with me a lot since it came out.
#24 “12 Fractures” by Pierce the Veil featuring chloe moriondo, that Pierce the Veil album is getting a lot of flack and like, yes, it’s their worst album. But if you get to the end you get to hear this sad movie ending song with a type of bittersweet messaging about going your separate ways when you know it isn’t a good idea. I also just have loved watching chloe’s career take off for the past few years and hearing her reference Pierce the Veil two years ago and now be on their song? That’s incredible.
#23 “Growing Away” by Free Range, was my “go for a walk” song for months before I had a car. The way they enunciate certain words really stands out and it's a nice, calming way to get the day started.
#22 “Darting Eyes” by With Sails Ahead, I was really impressed by the way this band marketed this song. I tried to hop on the wagon when they let me review it early but truly the amount of thought and work that went into hyping up a single was really fascinating and it's a ripper to boot.
#21 “Seeing Negative (Disappointment)” by Honey Revenge, this was one of those songs that felt like it was written for me at the time. I was in an awful headspace earlier this year and it sort of felt like the only thing I could see was the dark side of absolutely everything, even the mundane. When something is validating those feelings it's easier to escape that headspace.
#20 “Dance the Night” by Dua Lipa, I go back and forth on whether I loved the Barbie movie, and I even wrote a whole review of it and posted it to the blog, but I can’t deny that it gave us this. I think about Margot Robbie asking all her friends if they ever think about death and freezing a whole party on a weekly basis. Also, I’m in a constant struggle with my gender expression, as in I think about it every day, and often this song is a compression of the liberation I felt watching that movie the first time without any of the questionable bits.
#19 “18+’ by Scene Queen, it sucks that artists have to write songs like this and sucks even harder they have to push against abusers and weird internet dudes for relevancy. Every year is the year I hope no one else has to come forward.
#18 “god damn it jane” by Sydney Sprague, I saw Sydney live this year and she described this song as being “like a joke” before telling the story of what it's about. Finding the humor in it sort of reminds me that no matter how tenuous things may feel you will get to a point where you can either laugh about it or at least say you lived through it.
#17 “Pathetic -demo-” by Pollyanna, back when I reviewed Slime this was the only song, I was critical of. Jill reached out to me and showed me the original version of the track which had none of the issues I took with the song present. I’m really proud of her for getting her version out there.
#16 “Jelly Boi” by Palette Knife, when I visited home this year my friend Will had gotten pretty much the entire friend group into emo while I was gone. We had a lot of car and hotel room sing-alongs over that weekend. This and “No Shoes in the Coffee Shop” by Hot Mulligan were the only songs from this year and I already had a Hot Mully song locked in the year.
#15 “It Wasn’t Supposed to be Like This” by pulses., I said it in the review but it’s so cool to me that pulses. dropped a song like this knowing their influences. The sad, rainy evening R&B cut was inevitable for this band and now having heard it I don’t think they could have executed it any better.
#14 “vinyl fantasy x-2” by exciting!!excellent!!, this has got to be my favorite album intro all year by a mile. The intro riff to this is in my head pretty much every week and it also just felt, at the time of hearing it, like getting into this band before the record was a full circle moment in itself. Lots of references to the old material and just great to see how far Jasmine has pulled this project this year.
#13 “F.A.K.E.” by CLIFFDIVER, I went to a Cliffy show this year by myself and was really nervous about it. Joey and I have been Twitter mutuals ever since I reviewed their record before coming out of the closet and he was the one who got me to go that night. When I met him, he said it’s going to “be a great night, even better now that you’re here.” I sang and danced and screamed my lungs out. It was one of my favorites shows I’ve ever been to. Thanks so much Joey.
#12 “Reliable Narrator” by Chase Petra, I can usually be seen and heard complaining about nostalgia all over the place, but this takes me back to why I got into emo in the first place. Had this band existed in the aughts they would work really well on a Fueled by Ramen or a Decaydance, in either iteration of their sound. Regardless of that aspect, they’re one of my favorites doing it right now and I really hope to see a full length in 2024.
#11 “Thick Skull” by Paramore, I was pretty hard on This is Why when it dropped but Paramore ended up being my most played artist of the year anyway. When we put the record on for the first time, I remember our TV’s screensaver gave us this image of rocks and small landings in a body of water and I listened to this whole song and never took my eyes off the image. It gave me a lot of inspiration, something I put to good use behind the scenes of the blog and hopefully you’ll see the fruits of it eventually. I thought about putting “Sanity” here instead, but this felt right.
#10 “Thank You, New Jersey” by Origami Angel, the story he tells in this song is funny because if you’re from that part of the country New Jersey gets an unfair reputation. A lot of my favorite music that I’ve discovered reviewing has come out of New Jersey and it’s nice to see a band celebrating that scene when they aren’t even from there. Also, in the SotS review Sam said this sounds like a Barenaked Ladies song and they’re one of my favorite 90s bands on the low.
#9 “Celebrity -Blood Bunny ver.” by chloe moriondo, I was speechless when this did not show up in my Spotify Wrapped, definitely listened to this on repeat a lot through the year. I didn’t necessarily love chloe’s album last year and it was interesting to see a song from it reworked. It was also reworked in the style of my favorite record of hers. The double single as a whole sort of reminded me how many lanes this artist has explored in just a five-year career and I’m excited to see where else she goes in the future.
#8 “a lucid dream” by VERITE, I was pretty interested and inspired by dreams this year. I like to tell myself that dreams are memories from some other life you both have and haven’t lived. This song really captures the imagery of that. VERITE explains a failed relationship as a dream she wants to be real but simply isn’t. There was this point in the year where my depression got so bad, I felt like I fell out of Heaven, and I sang this to myself multiple times a day.
#7 “Pancakes” by Sara Henya, to be honest, I was stuck between this and “Out to See” and I’m not totally sure I made the right choice. However, as an inverse to the VERITE song, this is sweet as syrup. Sara describes the joys in labors of love and between that and her harp playing this always puts a pep in my step.
#6 “Truck” by illuminati hotties, another really sweet one. I have this dream of driving around the country and taking in life all over with a loved one or ones and this song is literally about that. Sarah Tudzin always sneaks in one song per year which reminds me that she’s one of the best songwriters playing right now.
#5 “I Got My Tooth Removed” by 100 gecs, I almost think “Hollywood Baby” works better here but that would accomplish the point of their justification on my albums list. (Spoilers) This song is the kind of song that reminds me why I fall in love with artists in place of albums. You can play this totally isolated, and it feels like you’re experiencing every aspect of what makes them a great band. It’s funny, it has a really well-crafted melody and instrumental. It has a lot of layers to it. Also just reminds me of one of my favorite bands from east coast DIY shows, Beebs and Her Money Makers. Also just love to see gecs tackle a real ska song.
#4 “Midas Touch” by glimmers, I thought all year that this was going to be my top played song and number one here. It was number four there too, by the way. This song is a lot of fun while also capturing being down on yourself about letting your favorite person down. Once I finally got a car again this was up there with my favorite songs to listen to while driving.
#3 “Wednesday, Forever???” by Fox Teeth, this is an incredible record that sadly just missed my top albums of the year and I wanted to make sure they got talked about here. (More spoilers) I feel like there aren’t a ton of newer emo songs that I find this fun and I know that’s probably more to my preference. Also just want to shout out this band for being so cool to me in general with a merch issue I had. A shirt of theirs was delivered to my old apartment back east and when I couldn’t get it back, they sent me a new one and the record which they did not have to do.
#2 “It’s a Family Movie, She Hates Her Dad” by Hot Mulligan, these were absolutely my favorite lyrics put out this year. The whole record talks about breaking away from blood ties you aren’t comfortable with but it's perfect on track two. This song also came on after practically every album was over on Spotify’s algorithm. Favorite passage has to be;
I’ll grow up and learn that we were poor, money talks but it never tells you love is more important.
Nothing special, family name.
I’ll never find the will to change and if I could, I would stay the same.
Which, I think, resonates with me because growing up it feels like money and security were sold to me as the most important things in the world by people who had that but genuinely didn’t enjoy life.
#1 “Top Dog” by Magdalena Bay, I really wanted to include the new mixtape in EPs or wherever it would fit but it didn’t feel right. This is why I enjoy pop songs. Has its titular theme which seems ridiculous on the surface but is about something that everyone wants in a consumable way. This song was on my mind all the time subconsciously but when I looked at my playlist while making this list it was the immediate number one.
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